"The Annotated Shakespeare" series enables today's readers to understand and enjoy the plays of the world's greatest dramatist. Comprehensive on-page annotations assist with vocabulary, pronunciation, prosody, and alternative readings of phrases and...

"Twelfth Night" is one of Shakespeare's funniest plays and also one of his most romantic. A young noblewoman, Viola, shipwrecked in a foreign land and separated from her twin brother, dresses as a man in order to enter the service of Orsino, duke of...

"King Lear", one of Shakespeare's darkest and most savage plays, tells the story of the foolish and Job-like Lear, who divides his kingdom, as he does his affections, according to vanity and whim. Lear's failure as a father engulfs himself and his wo...

The first tragedy to be played in the new Globe Theatre, Julius Caesar is set at a crucial turning point in Roman history, as the Republican gives way to the imperial. Safely removed in time and place from Shakespeare's Elizabethan England, Rome make...

In this lively comedy of love and money in sixteenth-century Venice, Bassanio wants to impress the wealthy heiress Portia but lacks the necessary funds. He turns to his merchant friend, Antonio, who is forced to borrow from Shylock, a Jewish moneylen...

Shakespeare's valedictory play is also one of his most poetical and magical. The story involves the spirit Ariel, the savage Caliban, and Prospero, the banished Duke of Milan, now a wizard living on a remote island who uses his magic to shipwreck a p...

While England is threatened by the Earl of Northumberland, Young Prince Hal cavorts in London's taverns, accompanied by the dissolute, entertaining Falstaff and his band of rogues. Much of this play's tension involves Prince Hal and Falstaff, as the...

One of the most powerful dramas ever written for the stage, Othello is a story of revenge, illusion, passion, mistrust, jealousy, and murder. If in Iago Shakespeare created the most compelling villain in Western literature, in Othello and Desdemona h...

In one of Shakespeare's bawdier comedies, contemporary audiences still take great pleasure in the rapid-fire verbal battles between the shrewish Katharina and the canny Petruchio, determined to subdue Katharina's legendary temper and win her dowry.

From the hilarious mischief of the elf Puck to the rough humor of the self-centered Bottom and his fellow players, from the palace of Theseus in Athens to the magic wood where fairies play, Shakespeare's marvelous A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play...